


so tell me why this has to be so heavy

by massivdisaster



Category: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Magic, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23011060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/massivdisaster/pseuds/massivdisaster
Summary: albus knows what's best; at least, he thinks he does. but what is he willing to give up in order to make his best friend happy?
Relationships: Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Severus Potter, Scorpius Malfoy/Rose Weasley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 66





	1. Chapter 1

\--

He stared at the spell before him, written in the margin, unsuspecting, but--that’s definitely what it was.

A love spell. One that will cause natural feelings (as natural as they can be, anyway) and not cause distress to anyone involved.

“Albus, are you even reading? Your essay is due tomorrow, you don’t want it to be bad again. I don’t know that you can handle another low mark.”

Scorpius kicked him lightly, laughing. Albus blinked away, staring back up at his best friend.

Scorpius--beautiful, kind, generous, wonderful Scorpius Malfoy--smiling at him, laughing with him, playing footsie with him, and--

And getting his eye caught as Rose walked up, bopping Albus on the head with a book. He grunted in protest, slamming the book shut and sliding it into his bag. Scorpius barely even noticed.

“Albus, you don’t have to go, I was just--”

“I’m not going to get anything done unless I’m by myself,” he said shortly, shoving all of his things into his bag, his face hot. He could picture Scorpius’s face falling, but he didn’t check to see, rubbing at his nose and nodding at Rose before rushing out of the library. He felt guilty, but he wanted to put himself first for once. 

“For once”. As if he hadn’t done this four nights in a row. Rose had been joining them more often than not, at the insistence of Scorpius, but Albus was getting fed up with them flirting while he genuinely tried to work; school didn’t come as naturally to him as it did for those two, and it was infuriating to watch them be together when he was trying to focus.

Maybe it was just infuriating watching them be together, a part of his mind said quietly. The rest of it reluctantly agreed.

It was fifth year, and over the summer Scorpius had suddenly become less like a bean pole and more like a model. He’d filled out, gained a few muscles, and added some color to his skin, so he no longer could be mistaken for a ghost. He’d also somehow gained confidence, which must have been partially attributed to his budding relationship with Rose.

“Budding relationship” may not have been quite right. Rose was still steadfastly not interested, but she liked the attention and swore to be his friend and only that until the end of time.

Which brought him back to page 46 in “Sub-Aquatic Botanical Mysteries”. Someone had written a love spell, one that wouldn’t harm anyone. He stared at it again, curled up in his bed, chewing on the idea of using it.

Scorpius was barking up the wrong tree with Rose. He knew this, and he knew that everyone already thought he and Scorpius were dating anyway, and he knew that his dreams the past few months proved that he would be a good boyfriend if given the chance, as much as he was scared to admit it.

The door slammed open and Albus jumped, clutching the book to his chest. Scorpius was standing there, laughing, soaking wet and holding his bag away from him so the puddle of water got bigger instead of smaller.

“Albus, you just missed it--”

“Clearly.”

Scorpius’s laugh died in his throat and his face dimmed, though the smile steadfastly remained. “Did you even get any of your essay done?”

Albus looked away, face red again, and pulled his blanket further up his chest. “Why is that all you want to talk to me about? I thought our friendship was more than just you policing my classwork.”

Scorpius’s face had dropped completely at this point. He waved his wand and the puddle disappeared, as well as most of what was dripping from his clothes and bag. He was still damp, but not sopping wet anymore, which was good, Albus supposed. But he pulled the book up so Scorpius could no longer see his face, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

“Albus, I just--”

“Just what? Not all of us are geniuses like you. I know what I’m doing, okay?”

“I just don’t want something to happen, Albus, you’re my best friend,” Scorpius said loudly over him. “I’d like you to finish Hogwarts with me and I’m a bit scared you won’t at this point if you don’t get your work done!”

“I can take a few bad essays fifth year, it’s not the end of the world.”

“OWLS are this year, if you don’t make high enough marks then it just might be!”

“Then I don’t become a healer or an auror like you, big deal!”

Albus threw his book down on the bed, hands shaking. Scorpius looked affronted, wand prepped at his side.

“I’m trying to be a good friend,” he said after a tense silence. Albus laughed.

“I’m sure you are. I don’t need a second mother. I’m well aware of what I’m doing or not doing, thank you.”

With that, he swished his curtains around his bed so he was in a cocoon of darkness. Just in case, he cast a muffling spell, and then he let himself cry.

He hated fighting with Scorpius, but he knew Scorpius was better off with Rose anyway, at least practically. As much as it hurt to see them together, he knew that’s what the world was pushing them towards, and what he was pushing Scorpius towards, too.

He saw the lights flicker out and he scrubbed at his face, fumbling for the book in the dark. Suddenly his curtain was pulled back and he grabbed the book quickly, blinking against the light of Scorpius’s wand.

“Albus, I don’t want to make you mad again, but...I miss my best friend.”

He sat down gently on the corner of the bed, lowering the light. His eyes searched Albus’s face for...something.

“What’s going on with you? It feels like you haven’t talked to me in weeks, and now you’re crying…”

Albus looked away, shoving the book under his pillow and pulling at the blankets. Scorpius sat there for another moment before sighing.

“...I just wanted to give it another shot. Sorry.”

As he started to exit the curtained bed, Albus grabbed for his hand, sniffing. Scorpius immediately crawled back onto the bed, holding Albus’s hands, his wand between them, illuminating them softly.

“I’m not...I’m sorry, Scorp, I just…”

Scorpius suddenly reached forward, wiping away his tears, and that made him cry harder. It was so simple, he could tell him now--Scorpius didn’t know Albus was gay, but here would be the time to tell, sweet and maybe a bit romantic. He could confess, Scorpius’s hand on his face, and maybe they’d kiss, maybe they’d fall into each other, maybe they could--

He stopped that train of thought right there. Scorpius wasn’t gay. Scorpius liked Rose. And that was all there was to it.

“Albus, hey, it’s okay. Please, talk to me.”

He was pleading. Albus swallowed hard.

“...I...I keep seeing you, and Rose, and how...how happy you are, and--I’m thrilled, god, I’m  _ thrilled _ , I’m so happy you’ve got another friend, I just…”

“...it’s because I’m your only friend?”

The words stung and Albus tried to physically pull back when he said it, but Scorpius immediately held on tighter, whispering apologies.

“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that--”

“You’re right, Scorp, that’s why it  _ hurts _ .”

He yanked his hand back and started picking at his fingers, pretending he wasn’t still crying. When he chanced a look up at Scorpius, his best friend looked lost.

“Al…”

“I know it’s my fault, believe me, Scorpius, that’s why--”

His words caught in his throat again. This time, Scorpius didn’t wait for him to find the words himself.

“Why you’re pushing me away. Because you think if you don’t have any friends, you’ll be fine.”

Albus nodded shortly. 

“Well, it will disappoint you to know,” Scorpius said softly, putting his hands on Albus’s knees, “that I don’t plan on going anywhere. You’re stuck with me. I’m your friend whether you like it or not.”

_ Friend. _

The book burned into Albus’s back and his face got hot again.

“You won’t even pretend to reconsider?”

“Not for a second.”

He swallowed down his protests and just nodded, letting his hands fall again. Scorpius grabbed them and smiled his stupid adorable smile and--

“Are we okay?”

“...yeah. I’m--I’m sorry. To you and Rose.”

“I know.”

He replayed the smile in his mind for hours after Scorpius went back to his own bed. He was so genuinely cheerful, so happy, such a beam of sunlight…

The next morning, when Rose came over at breakfast, he didn’t dart off. He made room for her to sit in between them and joked and laughed and pretended everything was fine.

And at lunch, he sat down and started reverse engineering a spell of his own.

\--

It took a month or two, and he wasn’t sure how well it was going to work as it was pretty hard to test, but he felt solid enough to try it. He climbed up to one of the windows where he could see the courtyard, where Scorpius and Rose were sitting, and he set to work trying to get the spells right.

“ _ Crescunt amare. _ ”

He saw Rose suddenly tilt her head before blinking and going back to laughing.

Success one.

He stared down at his new spell, hands trembling, and pointed his wand at Scorpius.

\--

Later that night, Scorpius came in. He barely looked at Albus except to acknowledge him with a nod.

Albus looked down at his notebook where he’d written his spell--“minuendo utique necessitudo”--and nodded softly. It had worked.

“Minuendo utique necessitudo.”  _ Diminishing relationship. _ Scorpius couldn’t feel guilty about being with Rose if he didn’t have a friendship with Albus to fall back on. To make things easier for all of them, Albus just...got rid of his best friend. For Scorpius, they’d just drifted apart, no particular reason, it was natural. Which is exactly what Albus was hoping for.

He drew the curtains around his bed and swallowed his guilt. This was for the best. And if he kept repeating it enough, it would have to become true.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really intended for the first bit to be a oneshot but people wanted more so i give you: more. and you'll get more after this, don't you worry.

Scorpius was very confused. He felt as though Thursday nights were usually taken up by something, some _ one _ , but Rose had quidditch practice, so it couldn’t have been that. He pushed open the door to his room and furrowed his brows, something tickling his brain, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. 

His roommate, Albus, was taking a nap, his wand held loosely in his hand. Had he been practicing spells?

By the smoking blanket at the end of his bed, Scorpius assumed he had. It was then he noticed the bruise forming on Albus’s face.

“Albus?”

He dropped his bag and ran over, mind racing over worst case scenarios. What if he was dead? Had a brain injury? Had charmed himself to only speak in tongues? He couldn’t speak tongues, he’d have no idea what to do. He shook Albus, muttering a basic healing spell as he did. Albus’s eyes fluttered open shakily, only for him to launch himself off the bed in the other direction when he recognized Scorpius.

“What--what were you doing?”

He popped his head up from the other side of the bed, eyes scanning until he found his notebook and pulling it to him. Scorpius frowned.

“You--your blanket was smoking, you looked like you’d hurt yourself, I just--”

“Don’t touch me! We--we aren’t friends! Don’t do that!”

Albus stood up, examining himself shakily, and Scorpius winced. Something in what Albus had said was registering, but he wasn’t sure what. 

“We...we used to be,” he said slowly, blinking against the fog. Maybe his plans  _ had  _ been with Albus after all. Why couldn’t he remember?

“Yeah, well, we aren’t any more, so--” Albus huffed, straightening his shirt. “--so don’t do that. Don’t touch me.”

“You’ve got a bruise on your face.”

Albus touched his face, frowning. “Do I?”

“Looks like it hurt. I--I know a healing spell, so it won’t look so bad. Or some kind of cloaking spell, or something.”

He couldn’t decipher the silence. Albus was staring at him, pained, but Scorpius wasn’t sure if it was from the bruise or something else.

“I’ll be fine, thanks,” Albus said after a moment. Scorpius took in a slow breath.

“...did you want to get dinner?”

“ _ Excuse me? _ ”

The panic that crossed Albus’s face confirmed Scorpius’s suspicions. He had something to do with the plans tonight.

“Don’t we always have dinner on Thursday, or something?”

“No,” Albus said shortly. He was still touching his bruise.

Scorpius stood for a second, weighing options, before quickly pointing his wand at Albus’s face and fixing the bruise. It faded fast, but Albus winced anyway.

“Right. Well, next time you’re practicing spells, be more careful?”

Albus finally broke eye contact, staring down at his blanket instead.

“...sure.”

The entire conversation left a bitter taste in Scorpius’s mouth, but he still couldn’t figure out why. He mulled over it for the next few days, pretending his heart didn’t pang every time Albus ran the other way when he saw Scorpius coming. Nights were rough; both of them sat on their beds, curtains drawn, aware of each other but steadfastly ignoring each other. Something in his head kept telling him this wasn’t how it had always been. Their room was never this silent, nor for this long, but what could he do? Albus wasn’t talking to him, and nobody else seemed to talk to Scorpius, either.

But on the upside, he did have Rose now, as she’d finally agreed to be his girlfriend. It was natural for them to fall into step on the way to classes, for him to kiss her forehead and her to burrow her head in his shoulder when her friends teased them. She would tell him all about quidditch, and he’d ramble to her about the new healing spells he found during his research. They spent all their time together, but he noticed her staring at the third chair across from them, the empty armchair, the bare plate next to him at breakfast. She never brought it up, but he knew she felt the void too. It wasn’t just him.

One Tuesday, a few weeks after the void had appeared, he caught Albus and his brother in a tiff outside of the Slytherin common room. He had just come back from finishing an essay, and he didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but something told him to hold off and listen for a second.

“...none of your business, James.”

“I just want to know if I need to beat him up for you, or talk to him--”

“No!”

“Half the school is talking about it, nobody even cares about him and Rose being together, they’re confused as to why you aren’t there too.”

“I told you, it’s none of your business--”

“--you’re my brother, and people talking about you  _ is  _ my business now. I promised you this summer, I’d defend you and Scor--”

“ _ Don’t say his name! _ ”

The silence was heavy, and Scorpius found himself blinking away tears. Something had happened with him and Albus, but Albus was the only one who knew. If that didn’t hurt…

“...I’m sorry, Al, I just--”

“My name is Albus. Go away, James, I have to--”

“--Albus, then, I’m worried about you! We all are! Mum and dad keep asking why you aren’t writing, they’re worried you’re cutting yourself off again, and now with you and--you know--not even being friends anymore...I just want to know what happened.”

“I fucked things up, that’s what happened, okay?”

“Is he mad at you?”

“He barely even remembers me, okay?”

“You obliviated him? Why?”

“No, I can’t--I’m not that good. I just--”

There was a crash. Scorpius realized with a start he’d dropped his bag and he only had a few seconds before he was discovered, hearing something he clearly wasn’t meant to know. He cast a cloaking spell as quickly as he could, praying he got himself covered enough.

Albus rounded the corner, face red and blotchy, and looked around, panicked. He didn’t seem to notice anything, not even the bag.

“Who’s there?”

His voice cracked and Scorpius suddenly wanted desperately to hug him. He refrained this time, holding his breath.

A few more seconds passed before James appeared behind him. “Do you see anyone?”

“I don’t know, just--go away, James, this was stupid anyway. And stop asking.”

There was a venom in Albus’s voice that hadn’t been there before. James frowned but nodded, starting to head off. Albus watched him go and looked around the hallway one last time, eyes passing straight over Scorpius, before turning and storming into the Slytherin house. Scorpius gave it a few minutes before he released the cloaking spell and grabbed his things, sighing.

Upstairs, he opened the door carefully, still not sure what he was going to say--or if he was going to say anything at all. Albus was on his bed, curtains open for once, facing away from the door.

Anything Scorpius had planned to say died in his throat instantly. He grimaced instead and trudged over to his bed, dropping his bag next to it and flopping face down. He heard Albus shift suddenly, but he didn’t turn around.

“Where have you been?”

Scorpius grunted into his pillow. “Library.”

“You’re just getting back?”

It suddenly registered that the sound of his bag falling was very familiar to both of them. Scorpius pulled himself up into a sitting position carefully, nodding. “Finished about ten minutes ago.”

Albus’s face was white and he was gripping the side of the bed tightly. Scorpius focused on keeping his face neutral.

“You alright? You look a bit ill.”

“...ate something funny,” Albus said after a moment, taking in a shaky breath. “Good night.”

With that, the curtains were closed again, and Scorpius sighed again. That had been close.

He started avoiding Albus too, now that he knew something really was wrong. He even went so far as to sleep in the common room instead, pretending the couch was more comfortable than his bed. Albus looked less and less like himself every time Scorpius saw him, but he tried not to focus on that too much. Until one afternoon when he (finally) went back to their room and found a notebook on his bed.

It was Albus’s notebook, and Scorpius wasn’t sure it was supposed to be there, but he picked it up anyway. It was there, but something told him reading it wouldn’t be a good idea. He opened it anyway.

Albus’s poor handwriting was all over the page, scratching things out, writing down wand notations, but none of it was anything Scorpius recognized. With a start, he realized Albus had been trying to make up his own spells. The first few pages looked like a final form of some spells--one was called the “proper romance spell” and another the “fixing my mistakes” spell. The most curious was a spell titled “this one sucks but at least it works”, and while Scorpius didn’t speak Latin, he could make out “necessitudo”--relationship. “Minuendo utique” was also familiar, and if he thought about it for long enough, he could figure it out--

The door to the bathroom slammed open behind him and he heard Albus take in a sharp breath.

“What the  _ hell  _ do you think you’re doing?”

“It was on my bed,” Scorpius said distractedly. “Minuendo utique…”

“That’s mine!”

Suddenly Albus was grabbing for the book, but Scorpius held it up and out of reach, still staring at the page. It was on the tip of his tongue. Maybe the notes at the bottom would help?

_ It didn’t take very long, only a few hours. Can’t tell if the effect was immediate, but it definitely worked. He doesn’t have a clue we were friends. _

“Scorpius, give it  _ back _ !” Was Albus crying? Scorpius didn’t bother to check. Something clicked into place.

“You removed our friendship from my head?”

He kept the book up and out of Albus’s reach, but he turned around, eyes blazing. Albus  _ was  _ crying, hard, looking tortured and desperate.

“Give it back!”

“You made up a spell so we wouldn’t be friends anymore?”

“Scorpius--”   
“Answer me first!”

Albus finally stepped back, looking smaller than Scorpius had ever seen him. “...yeah.”

“Why?”

He couldn’t tell what he was feeling, but suddenly the past month and a half made sense. Albus felt guilty, because he’d gotten rid of his only friend for some reason. The first spell--the “proper romance spell”--flitted across his mind, and he gasped, finding the missing piece.

“Scorp--”

“You--because of Rose and I?”

Albus physically winced, pushing snot around his face with the back of his hand. He was sobbing, trying to shrink away.

“...you’re so happy with her, I just wanted to help.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“You wouldn’t have been this happy if we were still friends, I know it, you kept saying you felt guilty because you didn’t want to hurt me, and--”

Albus stopped. Scorpius stared at him until he continued.

“...it hurt me to know you cared about me, but still wanted her more. So if you didn’t care about me, things would be okay. And they are.”

“You messed with Rose too.”

Albus winced again. Scorpius lowered the notebook, but the other boy didn’t move to grab it again.

“...you’re good together.”

“Why mess with things? They were fine as they were!”

He didn’t know that, but saying it felt good, as if a weight had been lifted.

“Because I want you happy more than anything, and you want her, and if I’m not part of the picture, then…”

“That doesn’t make sense. If you’re my best friend--”

“I couldn’t be happy for you because I think I have a--a crush, on you, okay?”

The words hung in the air for a moment. Something else clicked in Scorpius’s head, and he wondered if Albus could hear it.

Albus rubbed at his face again, staring at the floor. “I’m sorry, I…”

Without thinking, Scorpius dropped the notebook and pulled Albus in for a kiss.


End file.
